Love makes you do the wacky.

Willow ,'Beneath You'


Buffy and Angel 1: BUFFYNANGLE4EVA!!!!!1!

Is it better the second time around? Or the third? Or tenth? This is the place to come when you have a burning desire to talk about an old episode that was just re-run.


Noumenon - Aug 04, 2008 11:26:11 am PDT #6440 of 10467
No other candidate is asking the hard questions, like "Did geophysicists assassinate Jim Henson?" or "Why is there hydrogen in America's water supply?" --defective yeti

That British guy who heard Buffy saying "Mum? Mum? Mummy?" in The Body -- what did he think the episode "Inca Mummy Girl" was about?


Shir - Aug 04, 2008 11:26:43 am PDT #6441 of 10467
"And that's why God Almighty gave us fire insurance and the public defender".

Pssst. Why do we hate A Hole in the World so much?


sumi - Aug 04, 2008 11:31:13 am PDT #6442 of 10467
Art Crawl!!!

I like the dragon.


Invisible Green - Aug 04, 2008 11:54:32 am PDT #6443 of 10467

I don't remember "Dad" much, but I vaguely remember "Provider" was worse.

I remember liking "Dad." I should rewatch it to see how it holds up in my mind. But I know I loved "Provider," because the end-of-teaser joke made me laugh through the entire commercial break.


Lee - Aug 04, 2008 1:58:26 pm PDT #6444 of 10467
The feeling you get when your brain finally lets your heart get in its pants.

Pssst. Why do we hate A Hole in the World so much?

I kind of wonder that too, Shir. I didn't think it was the bestest episode ever, but I liked some of it quite a bit.


Sue - Aug 04, 2008 2:55:58 pm PDT #6445 of 10467
hip deep in pie

Yeah, that's kind of like the talent show stuff in the "Buffy" with the fucking puppet. The talent show stuff is brilliant, even if the A plot is horrid. It always made me hate Mutant Enemy more, because it prevented me from just outright loathing an episode.

Oh, but Skinner had a few good lines in that episode too.


billytea - Aug 04, 2008 3:40:22 pm PDT #6446 of 10467
You were a wrong baby who grew up wrong. The wrong kind of wrong. It's better you hear it from a friend.

I kind of wonder that too, Shir. I didn't think it was the bestest episode ever, but I liked some of it quite a bit.

My reasons are back a few posts. I wasn't impressed with them killing a major character so soon before the end of the show, and all their efforts to remind us how much everyone else cared about Fred felt gratuitous and contrived. With possibly the exception of Wesley shooting someone in the knee, as there at least they were showing rather than just telling.


Strega - Aug 04, 2008 4:05:10 pm PDT #6447 of 10467

I will quote myself because I am shameless. And more importantly, lazy.

This isn't really an episode that's all about Fred. It's all about how other people feel about Fred, and, most particularly, how Wesley feels about Fred. I mean, they only hooked up last week so that this would be that much worse for him; it'd be just as bad for her if they'd kept it on a "just friends" level. Wesley's the tragic martyr who has to watch his sweetie dying, and he's being noble and supportive as his heart breaks, and it could be his dog dying instead for how much who Fred is matters to this. She's not a character, she's a blank screen the other characters project things on. She had no real responsibility for getting sick; that was done to her. She has no ability to save herself; that's up to the others. She could be anyone. It doesn't matter.

Plus there's the excruciating dialogue and the 12-hour death scene and the stuff that I think is meant to be romantic that's actually incredibly creepy. And just the crassness of the manipulation which is a major problem with Whedon. I mean, the opening flashback? The goddamn toy rabbit? It feels like bad faith -- that he writes that stuff solely because it's an easy way to pull tears out of the audience. And at a basic writing level, there's exposition that's more confusing than the thing it's explaining, and a deeply lame "oh no, I am undone by my own sudden & inexplicable carelessness" gotcha for Knox.

I don't know. The run-of-the-mill bad episodes, like She and I Fall to Pieces... they are at least fun to mock. A Hole in the World and Dad make me profoundly angry and then I start ranting and foaming at the mouth and feh.


Invisible Green - Aug 04, 2008 4:24:17 pm PDT #6448 of 10467

The reason I didn't care for "A Hole in the World" on the first viewing was because I figured they'd rescue her, so it was just kind of boring. It wasn't until halfway through "Shells" that there was the revelation that Fred's soul had been destroyed during Illyria's resurrection and that Fred could never come back, leaving me with an "Oh, I guess that's kind of sad" response.

Dramatically, I'd have to start out knowing that she was gonna die to give a damn. It also didn't help that she died on a cliffhanger, because that always [except here, I guess] means the character's coming back next week. It's nice that Joss refused a cliche, but he sacrificed the emotional integrity of the episode to do so.

But rewatching the episode, knowing what's going to happen, I do think it's a well-written tragedy. It's just a shame that it's structured so that it doesn't work if you haven't already seen it.


Atropa - Aug 04, 2008 5:06:55 pm PDT #6449 of 10467
The artist formerly associated with cupcakes.

The goddamn toy rabbit?

Aaaauuuuugh. That was the point in the episode where I broke down crying. I knew I was being manipulated, I was angry I was being manipulated, but the bit about her toy bunny smashed my buttons with a hammer, and I started sobbing.

(Excuse me, I need to go grab Clovis and mutter despairingly about the Velveteen Rabbit.)